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Buffalo Bill is back.
The legendary character of the Far West, purely William Frederick Cody, visited Barcelona in the winter of 1889 with his famous Wild West show as part of one of his European tours and set up his circus of 'cowboys', Indians, horses and bison in a hippodrome in what is now the heart of the city.
He now returns to a very different city where they would not let him act with animals, circulate diligently through the low emission zone and not to mention shoot the Indians.
Obviously he is not himself in person (today he would be 177 years old) but an actor who embodies him, Ramon Madaula, in a theatrical production,
Buffalo Bill in Barcelona
, directed by Mònica Bofill, which can be seen these days at the Goya Theater.
In the play, written by the actor himself, Buffalo Bill appears to a current journalist (Raquel Sans, a popular TV3 news presenter), allows himself to be interviewed by her and reveals a love affair with her great-grandmother.
Preceded by the jingling of his spurs, Madaula (Sabadell, 60 years old) bursts into the audience of the theater for the interview, which takes place shortly before the performance, and already changed.
His characterization of his character is formidable: it's like being before Buffalo Bill himself and it's hard not to jump, and he's not carrying his old rifle, which he called Lucrecia
,
but a Winchester.
They are testing the smoke machine on stage, and the old explorer, colonel, buffalo hunter, and circus impresario seems to be surrounded by a cloud of Kansas dust and gunpowder.
More information
The Buffalo Bill Disagreement
Question:
The resemblance is extraordinary!
Answer:
With a goatee and a Stetson hat we all look alike.
Q.
The fringed jacket is beautiful, you usually go to Formentera, keep it, you will succeed with it.
R.
And so much!;
They made it for me especially for the show,
Q.
Much has been documented, what was Buffalo Bill like up close?
R.
It seems quite charming, very nice;
he treated everyone in his company well;
although he abused alcohol, and obviously he was not an intellectual.
Q.
Actually, there weren't many people who, like him, were friends with Custer and his nemesis, Sitting Bull...
R.
Actually he was a simple buffalo hunter and fame did not take him very well.
They made him the great hero of the Far West, the first superhero.
Q.
Where does your interest in the character come from?
R.
My father always explained to me about his performances in Barcelona.
Looking for a story to stage, I came up with this one, which he had in his bedroom, and worth the expression.
I have fabulated a bit, although 90% of what I tell is true.
We have done something in a small format, but it is a story that cried out for a musical or a television series.
I found out that Buffalo Bill didn't do too well in the city… He didn't even know Barcelona existed when he came because he had days off on tour.
And he met with a strange reception.
My thesis is that here, as Pla said, we have an unhealthy fixation with reality and it is hard for us to believe the epic, the heroes are difficult for us, the arrogance, the cockiness of Buffalo Bill...
Q.
On the other hand, he was successful all over the world.
R.
He came up with that best-selling
show
from the Far West, with the authentic characters, and he rocked it.
Buffalo
Bill's Wild West
created the imagination of a nation, and prefigured the
western.
The real Buffalo Bill.
Q.
Were you a boy from Fort Comansi?
A.
No, but I watched
Bonanza
and played Indians and Cowboys.
He had a hat and two guns, and he wanted to be a cowboy.
Q.
Today all that is quite politically incorrect.
R.
Buffalo Bill boasted of having killed his first Indian at age 11, then single-dueled the Cheyenne Yellow Hand and scalped him;
played the episode on the
show.
Western patterns don't hold up very well today, but the genre can be reinvented.
Although I have my doubts that young people are interested in the figure of Buffalo Bill.
Q.
Something of the twilight tone of the show has stuck to it, very funny on the other hand.
R.
Horses, Indians, guns, everything seems very far away.
But playing Buffalo Bill has a playful point of childhood mythology, of playing
cowboys
Q.
Have you considered going dressed like that to put flowers on the graves of the Indians from the
show
who died here of the flu?
A.
No, neither have I visited the hotel where Buffalo Bill was staying, nor have I looked for the tooth that according to legend was taken out here;
but now that he says it...
The actor Ramón Madaula, at the Goya Theater in Barcelona this Monday.
albert garcia
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